


Peculiar Things

by Skinandpit



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-04
Updated: 2014-01-04
Packaged: 2018-01-07 11:28:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1119301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skinandpit/pseuds/Skinandpit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lucifer is back in Sam's head, and this time Castiel hasn't got the juice to take him out again. It's not the end of the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Peculiar Things

**Author's Note:**

> Secret Santa Exchange for 17yrdean  
> Prompt: Hallucifer is back in Sam’s mind and Cas is trying to comfort Sam, and help him. Though, he’s no longer an angel and he can’t just fix it like he did before.

It happens while his brother is scooping mulled wine. 

It hasn’t been an easy Christmas — Winchester holidays never are. The echo of Gadreel sings through Sam’s veins, and Cas has coughed up what was left of his stolen grace. Still, there are presents and there was turkey, and there is the scent of heavy fruit and liquor hanging in the air. Like all flawed Christmases, it has its own charm.

So it’s more than a little disappointing when Sam ruins it. 

Dean has found the one room in the bunker with a wood-burning fireplace, and that fire goes out quite suddenly. Sam turns, squinting, too thick with the wine and the comfort of company to think much of it until he exhales and his breath rises in a white cloud.

He knows this scenario. 

The lights flicker.

He stands up, alarmed, and looks around him for the source. Cas tilts his head upwards, squinting, but he doesn’t get out of his seat. One thing Sam is learning quickly is that human Cas is unconscionably lazy. 

“Where is it?” he says. 

Dean doesn’t bother looking up. “What, man?” 

“The spirit!” Sam spins around, searching for both it and something to fight it with. He spots an iron poker leaning against the fireplace — Sam is at least sixty percent certain Dean put it there to complete the image of a postcard Christmas — and strides towards it. He picks it up and swings it over his shoulder. It’s heavy, and cold, and it feels right. “The men of letters kept so much crap in here that some of it is bound to be haunted. And Christmas is the traditional time for tragedy, so — what?” 

Dean and Castiel are staring at him. 

Dean takes a tentative step forwards. “Sam, man, there’s nothing here.” 

Sam opens his mouth to protest — he can see the steam, pouring out of their mouths every time they speak — but he shuts it when he sees Dean's eyes. 

They’re black, pure black. 

“Get out of him,” he says.

“Sam,” Dean says. He spreads his hands. 

Sam adjusts his grip on the poker and rushes his brother. 

Dean cries out — woah, now, let’s just — and then there’s something heavy smashing into his shoulder, driving him into the ground. He twists and sees Cas over him, pressing him bodily into the ground. In the time it takes for him to realize what is happening, Cas slams his hand flat against his neck and shoves his cheek into the cold floor. Sam can feel his teeth digging into the soft skin of his mouth.

“Breathe,” Castiel commands. 

“I need to —“

“There is nothing in your brother. Breathe.”

Sam inhales. Sam exhales. He twists upwards, ready to strangle Castiel — only human, now — in order to get to his brother, to drive the thing out of him and get his brother back, but when he looks up again the cold is gone and the fire is burning like it has never stopped and the darkness is gone from his brother’s eyes. 

He doesn’t — 

In the corner of his eye, behind the Christmas tree, he sees a man wave — and then flicker out, gone so quick he’s not even sure there was anyone there.

 

###

Sam makes Dean do the tests anyway, salt and holy water and scratches with a silver blade. When they all come back clean, he slinks into the library to hide, ashamed and confused. Dean lets him go.

Cas finds him there sometime midday, surrounded by books that he’s trying hard to get at least a little lost in. They all smell like mildew. The lights in the library are all very dim, and they dye Castiel’s skin a warm amber. He touches Sam’s shoulder to get his attention, then squats beside him. “Why did you do that?” he asks. 

Sam looks up. There’s that old familiar urge, ever present. Heal me, fix me, turn me good. He says, “I don’t know.” 

“It was a very strange thing to do.” 

Sam nods. He looks down at his knees, then folds his hands into his lap. He crushes his fingers together until they hurt. He wants everything to hurt. 

“I know.” 

Castiel reaches forwards. He touches Sam’s forehead with two warm fingers. There is no healing there — only skin and pressure. “If you find out,” Castiel says, “please tell me.” 

###

 

Someone is laughing. 

It echoes through his head like a bell, like a scream, like a minster's voice rising. Sam curls tight on his bed with its tight plain sheets and groans, trying to get it out.

He grinds his knuckles into his eyeballs. He dreams of teeth. 

###

He is losing it. 

It has been two decades of too much and he has finally worn too thin.

At the very least, he knows that. 

###

It is almost a relief when, a week later, Lucifer shows up with a wink and a grin. 

###

He goes to Castiel.

Lucifer dogs him into the bedroom. _Oh, that’s interesting — running to the angel instead of your brother, are we?_

He’s different this time — faded, somehow. His voice comes as if through layers of ocean water.

Cas has his own bedroom, now. It’s set apart from the rest of them because he liked the room with the window. They hadn’t known it existed until Cas wandered through the rooms, one hand trailing along the stone, searching for sky like Ariadne following her red string. 

Sam knocks on the door. 

“Just a minute!” He hears shuffling from the inside, and then Cas pulls the door open. He smiles when he sees Sam. “Hello, Sam.”

“Hey,” says Sam. He looks away as Lucifer blows a raspberry.

Maybe Castiel can see something or maybe it's just the hour, but one way or another Castiel's face goes in and he steps aside to let Sam pass. 

“Come inside,” he says, and Sam does.

Like the Winchesters, Castiel is learning domesticity form the ground up. 

His walls are bare. It would be depressing, the coldness of a prison cell if it weren't for the sliver of glass against the ceiling which lets in light. It spills through beautifully. Daylight is sweet in the underground. Sunlight has become a commodity that Sam seeks out through long runs and random bouts of exercise, and which Dean seems to have forgone entirely. 

The counters are full of strange kick-knacks that he’s picked up along the way — bird feathers, strangely shaped rocks, and a handful of crumpled bills and coins. The sunlight makes them glitter like they’re wet. 

Sam sits down on Castiel’s bed — it is unmade, the blankets lying in mountains which at least prove that Castiel had been sleeping. “It’s Lucifer,” he says. 

Castiel squints at him. “Lucifer made you attempt to murder your brother.”

“No, it’s …“ He trails off. “Kind of." 

“Has he escaped?” Castiel seems doubtful, which is at least reassuring. 

Sam shakes his head. “No. I mean, I don’t think so. It’s like before. When I was — before the hospital, when I couldn’t speak, when you did the thing.” 

Castiel squints at him, evidently thinking, then nods. He’s gotten really good at about not forcing the Winchesters to speak.

“It’s the same?”

“It’s — it’s similar. He’s fainter. He didn’t show up at first, and now it’s —“ He looks over at Lucifer, in the corner of the room, that grinning maw of his. Lucifer wiggles his eyebrows, then licks his lips, and Sam turns away, suddenly nauseous. “It’s like watching him through television static.”

“You haven’t told Dean.” It’s not a question. Sam shakes his head. “Why?” 

“It’s — he has enough to deal with. He doesn’t need another crises. None of us need another crises. And —“ He breaks off. 

Talking to Castiel is funny, sometimes. He listens quietly, and very judgementally. Sam thinks he ought to hate that, but he doesn't. It's one of his favourite things about their live-in ex-angel. Most people try so hard not to think he's an awful person. Castiel never bothered. He slaughtered the angels; Sam started the apocalypse. They each know where the other stands. 

He takes a breath, and goes on. “After everything, I want him to stop looking at me like I’m fragile.” 

Castiel looks at him steadily, then nods. “He will find out." 

“I know.”

“This is only delaying the inevitable.” 

Sam bites the inside of his mouth. It tastes like pennies. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do.” 

“Okay,” says Castiel. He stands up, and walks over, and pats Sam on the shoulder. “It’s going to be alright.” He must have seen it on television somewhere. Sam looks up at him, and smiles weakly, and then — surprising himself — lays his head on Castiel’s arm, cheek to his forearm, jaw to his wrist. 

Castiel looks down at him, and says nothing. 

###

Lucifer is still there, lurking. He doesn’t talk very much, except at night, when he crouches over Sam and whispers into his ear: _you’re loosing it, you’ve been loosing it for years, how long before you snap and kill someone, boy king._

He lights the world up on fire around Sam, and turns it down to ice. He plays the buzz of mayflies constantly as Sam is trying to eat. He touches Sam’s throat and laughs when his esophagus convulses. 

“I don’t understand why he's back,” Sam tells Castiel, one day when he's hiding out from his brother. Right now, he's being willfully ignorant, but he's not stupid. If Sam mopes around him all day, he'll find out eventually. 

They're in one of myriad rooms in the basement, surrounded by curseboxes. Sam is perched on the edge of a metal table, trying very hard not to touch anything, although Castiel has assured him several times that the boxes are perfectly safe. For his part, Castiel sits directly on top of the biggest box in the room, large enough to use as a chair, his chin held between his hands. 

What's in it, Sam has asked, and Castiel had shot him a withering look. I'm not an angel anymore, he'd said, I can't tell without opening it. 

“It’s probably Gadreel,” Castiel tells him. 

Sam looks up, sharply. “But Gadreel is gone."

Castiel nods. It’s very exaggerated, like the rest of him.

“He’s gone, but he inhabited you. Did you know that some of your religious traditions name Gadreel as the serpent?” He looks at Sam for a moment, very intently, until Sam nods. He knows the lore on angels very well. “They’re not wrong, but the subtleties are lost in translation, as always.” 

“But you think it’s him,” Sam prompts.

“Yes. It’s likely.” Castiel leans forwards. “Angels are made of what you insist upon calling ‘energy’. To be inhabited by one changes you at the subatomic level. You can’t walk away unchanged.”

Sam doesn’t shiver, because he’s had a lot of practise not shivering when sickening things happen. He hates the idea of changing the parts of him, but that sort of thing has been happening for a long time now and there’s no point pressing the matter. He nods, and tries not to let his exhaustion show. 

“Your time in the cage left wounds. When I —“ Cas stumbles over his words, but just for a moment. “When I took your time in the cage onto myself, I gave those wounds time to heal. When Gadreel inhabited you, he must have ripped your scabs open again. This is … aftershock.” 

Sam pinches the bridge of his nose. “Okay,” he says. “How do we fix it?” 

“We, ah. Sam.” Castiel shakes his head. “We don’t. We can’t. The isn’t a doctor in the world who could help you. The angels aren’t interested in helping.” He hesitates. He looks at his hands. “I am not of use.”

Strangely, Sam feels very calm. 

He has been waiting a long time for this moment, the moment when everything would finally fall apart — no deal, no hope, no change — and here it is, and he has seen it before, he has passed the hopeless point more times than he can count. By now he knows how it will go. He can fight it, and he will escape. There will be a way. There is always a way. But the cost will be more than he can stand — his brother’s life, the end of the universe. 

He was meant to die when he was only twenty-three but Dean saved him, and all that has followed since has been a result of that. There is a string around his body, tangled — squirming his way out of every mess only pulls the knots tighter, drags more bystanders into the mess. 

 

He doesn’t want this to be fixed. 

“You can’t tell Dean,” he says. 

Castiel lowers his eyes. “Okay.”

“Promise.” 

“I promise,” Castiel says, and lays a hand on Sam’s shoulder, and he doesn’t ask any questions. 

He knows what Sam is. He has named him before — am abomination, the devil’s broken vessel.

Sam exhales, long and tired and relieved, because there is at least one person in the world who knows him for the infested, unnatural mess that he is. 

###

 

Cas takes to following him around. Sam gets up from breakfast and Castiel rises too; Sam decides to go running and Cas declares a longstanding interest in fitness. Dean starts giving them funny looks, but he doesn’t say anything about that, either. 

It's ... nice, actually, to have a shadow. 

It's nicest in the cold mornings, running with white smoke pouring out of their mouths and noses. The world too bright, but Sam can stand it so long as he doesn't dwell too long on the eerie glow which rises from the trees and the pavement. 

Castiel isn't a very good runner. He can last maybe two minutes before he's doubled over gasping for air. Sam can run for hours, but he stops and waits for Cas to recover. 

He stands up after one such bout and looks Sam directly in the eyes. It's strange -- Cas doesn't do that very often. "You are surviving," he says. 

Breathless, Sam nods. 

"Good," says Cas, then breathes in deep and squares his shoulders and starts to run again. 

Sam watches him. His belly feels warm. 

He smiles, until Lucifer trails a finger down the back of Sam's neck and he jumps.

Lucifer’s breath comes hot and wet in his ear. It feels real. "Moving on, bunk buddy?" 

Sam doesn't say anything. He has a sudden urge to rip all of his skin off or at least take a boiling shower, but he doesn't say anything. He's getting really good at hiding ugliness.

Besides --

He wouldn’t have picked Lucifer to say it, but all the same he thinks, viscously, triumphantly, _yeah, actually, I am._

###

They sit around the breakfast table, him and Cas and Dean. Dean makes everyone perfect omelettes, and serves them while chattering about a diner he'd once been to that made the best breakfasts, the Citizen Kane of breakfasts. He seems genuinely proud of himself. 

The minute Sam's plate touches the table, the food on it explodes into maggots. 

Sam can't stop himself. He gags.

Dean looks back at him, concerned. Cas simply grabs his plate and switches it for his own. 

Dean’s eyebrows furrowed. “Is there, uh —“ 

“Sam’s has more onions," Cas says, already stuffing his mouth. "I like onions. Sam does not like onions.” 

"Okay," says Dean. He looks at them very strangely, as if they have just transformed in front of him or possibly as if they have begun snogging at the breakfast table. "Weirdos." 

Sam shrugs and smiles. His food stays the same and Cas eats the maggots and Sam can't help it, he's beaming. 

While they eat, Castiel’s foot brushes up against Sam’s. He’s never been good at personal space. Sam should probably say something, but he doesn’t. He just lets it happen and eats his omelette and sort of flushes when Dean looks straight at him with an expression of deep and offended bewilderment on his face. 

###

Dean thinks they're --

He doesn't worry too much about it. At night, screaming into Castiel's shoulder, holding on to his best friend for dear life, he doesn't worry to much about it. 

Cas holds him and says, shh, shh, it's not real, none of it is real. 

The room is streaked with blood and even though Sam knows it isn't, he can still see it, Dean's body suspended from the roof, the blood, his organs torn out, the bleeding, the hellhound gouges. He knows it's not real but he's seen worse before and that's not a comfort, it's the worst thing in the entire world.

There is blood on Sam’s hands, and that’s real, that’s from when he broke his skin digging his fingernails in too deep. 

Shh, says Cas, and grabs him until Sam's panicked screams dissolve into uncontrolled babysobs. 

###

It’s ugly, it’s all very ugly. 

Lucifer claps his hands and the lights go out, the dark, nothing around him but blackness and he’s trying to keep on moving so Dean won’t notice. 

Lucifer smiles and Dean’s skin falls off of him in wide pink sheets and he’s not allowed to scream. 

Cas puts a hand on his shoulder and he thinks, it’s okay, almost, it’s almost very nearly alright. 

 

###

In the night, in a brief moment of pure clear lucidity, he comes to Castiel’s room and knocks twice. Cas is opening the door by the second rap of his knuckles. 

“What is it, Sam?” 

He’s wearing cotton pyjama pants and a pale blue shirt that either used to belong to Sam or Dean, Sam can’t remember. There are deep black circles under his eyes. Cas has looked exhausted from the day they met.

The only light from Castiel’s little window is moonlight. It’s dull, and it makes the whole world seem flat, easy to handle. 

“I’m tired,” Sam says, meaning, I’m lonely. “Can I come in?” 

Cas doesn’t hesitate. He opens the door all the day and Sam steps in. 

He hasn’t been in here for a while and now he sees that the floor is littered with open books. He kneels down inspects one. It’s a physics textbook. 

“You’re trying,” Sam says. 

Cas nods, slowly. 

“Don’t,” says Sam. “Please. It always ends — it always ends with someone else getting hurt.” 

Castiel nods again and Sam isn’t sure if he believes him, but he’s willing to pretend unconditional certainty, just this once. 

He steps close to Cas and puts his hands on his shoulders and lays his forehead against his shoulder. 

“I love you,” he says. 

Castiel stills. His shoulders, especially, sink downwards — they are always tense, always ready for flight, but now they sink and quiet and they are going nowhere. Sam thinks of the way he’d always disappeared in the past. There for one moment, halfway across the world in the next. 

Cas turns his head and kisses him, very softly, on the cheek. Sam can feel his stubble. 

And then, as if they’d planned it, as if it had been choreographed, they’re tumbling onto the bed together — they’re burying themselves in the sheets and Castiel’s hands are searching everywhere, finding the corners of him, the edges, the bones, and Sam is holding on tight to his back, fingers scrabbling, he’s turning him over, his lips are soft and hot and wet against his skin and they are only touching skin and bone and Cas lets out a long exhausted, contended sigh as if for centuries he has been waiting. 

Sam stops, pulls back, looks at him. 

Castiel’s eyes are closed, but as he watches they open, impossibly blue and wide and searching. Sam thinks of the fire they’d held, of how looking upon the true form of Castiel would burn out his retinas. 

“The Grigori fell because of this,” Castiel says. 

“I know,” Sam says, because he’s read the books. The high hosts, the council — Azazel amongst them, Gadreel amongst them, they fell because they’d fallen in love and acted upon it. “We don’t have to.” 

“I think,” says Cas. He stops. He looks up at Sam, his mouth half open, and licks the edge of his bottom lip. “I think. Right now. That would be be best.”

“Okay,” says Sam. He moves to leave, but Castiel grabs his shoulders and pulls him downwards, until Sam is lying flat against Castiel, his weight pressing him deep into the mattress. 

“Am I crushing you?” he asks, worried, but Cas shakes his head. 

“No,” he says. “No, please, you’re perfect.”

They lie there like that, warm and close, their hearts beating against each other until their rhythm slows to match, until their breath comes slow and heavy and stops altogether and then they sleep in the tangle of sheets and for once Lucifer does not come. 

###

In the morning, at breakfast, they stumble in together with Cas holding Sam’s arm, bumping occasionally into his side. The devil is behind them, making kissy noises, and Sam is trying very hard to ignore the indignity of it. He likes Cas, and he isn’t going to let some stupid hallucination ruin that. 

Dean is already there, with pancakes. 

He looks at them, very long and hard and slow, then snorts. “Whatever,” he says. “Shine on, you crazy diamonds.” 

Castiel squints at him, but Sam beams. “It’s a song,” he says, then sits down for breakfast. He pulls Cas in with him and loops an arm around the back of his chair. “A really, really good one.”

Dean looks at him, then rolls his eyes. “You don’t listen to Pink Floyd.” 

Sam shrugs. 

Cas lays his head against his shoulder. It's heavy. Sam pats his back and Cas wraps his arms around Sam’s waist and buries his nose in his shoulder. 

“You smell slightly unwashed,” Castiel says.

“Thanks,” says Sam. 

“Look at you two lovebirds.” Dean passes out pancakes. He smiles at them, and Sam watches him try and surreptitiously pick the ones with the most blueberries for himself. Sam smiles into Castiel’s hair and said nothing about it. 

“Hey,” Dean says, “We’re doing alright, aren’t we?” 

Sam looks at Cas, resting against him. He doesn’t look at Lucifer, who is behind him, drumming his fingers on the back of his chair, the ugly calloused tips of his fingers brushing every so often against his neck, and he doesn’t look at the fire which is already beginning to creep in from the edges of the room. He thinks about the night, with Cas so soft against him and he thinks about the pancakes so warm in front of him. There will be horrible things coming, but they aren't here now. This is the kind of peace he’s going to get. It’s fragile and it won’t last, but it’s more than he was ever promised. 

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, Dean, I think we’re going to be okay.”


End file.
